'The Martian' Film Review

Film: The Martian (2015) 

Genre: Sci-Fi, Drama. 

The Martian Film Review

First things first, I had not heard of this film or this book until I saw a trailer at a showing of the second Maze Runner film. I still can’t quite wrap my head around this film because I watched the trailer, thought it looked good and that was that, there was no desperate need to see it. Until I got home. When I got home, instead of thinking about the film that I had just seen, I couldn’t stop thinking about The Martian, I was truly intrigued and that’s when I discovered it was also a book.

I decided the following week to go check it out. Now, if you’ve looked around my blog you would have seen a few book reviews, so you know that I’m a reader. In my last book review, I also mentioned that I was on a self-inflicted book ban. (I’m not allowed to buy any more books because I already have a ridiculous amount that I hadn’t read yet.) I saw this movie, I watched, I left the cinema and I walked straight into a bookstore to buy a copy.

I’m hoping that lets it sink in how much I enjoyed this film.

We start off with our crew on Mars, collecting rocks and sand (I don’t know about you but I’d be hella pissed to fly all that way for some rocks and sand.) when they are interrupted by a mega storm. The storm is so dangerous that the crew are forced to abandon their mission early and head back to Earth. But darling old Matt Damon (which I never understood the obsession – until now) gets hit and is left by his crew mates believing he is dead. He’s not! Shocking.

Totes not dead. 

The film then shows a rather grotesque self-medical scene where Matt Damon has to pull some pole out of him. I was cringing. He also then proceeded to staple himself back into place. At this point, I’d put my popcorn down for sure. Luckily for our main character – he is a botanist! And he just happens to know all about plants and so begins the montage where the man grows a load of potatoes from shit. Yeah you read that right, potatoes on shit on mars. How delectable. How convenient that the botanist ends up on mars and not the doctor or the pilot eh?

Him being revealed as still alive on Mars came differently to how I was expecting. In the trailers, I interpreted that his little video where he’s like ‘I’m alive!’ was going to have been signalled or something (I don’t know how this works, I’ve hated science since I was five years old, ‘kay?) and NASA were going to find it and be like shitting hell! The botanist is still alive! Why is he eating his own shit? My god, he’s gone mad.

See all these potatoes? They're made from my shit! Surprise!

It went a little differently; he was discovered via satellite images where a young woman discovers that the car has moved. Yeah, total snoozefest but the drama comes later instead and at least it’s the same way as it is in the book. The film is very representative of the book in the sense that the first third of the film focuses very heavily on our stranded botanist following the rest of the film to introduce NASA and the remaining crew. I would have liked to see more of the crew throughout the film (and the book!) if I’m honest.

My major gripe with the book is that if I hadn’t seen the film first, I would have had no idea who our main guy was referring to when talking about the crew. Now, maybe that’s just me and my inability to remember names and their jobs or maybe the author needs a guide at the start? Every book needs a guide of some sort, for sure. They come in so handy!

Now, one negative I have about this film is the drama factor and to be honest, I felt it with the book too – more strongly with the book. It’s one thing after another and then another, constant. I get that there needs to be a problem for our main character to overcome, it’s the crux of every story but there doesn’t need to be problem after problem. It got a little annoying towards the end of the book, as I said though not as annoying in the film.

What next? I blow up. The end. 

As a whole, I thought this film was fantastic! I ended up watching it again just before the end of the year and realised that in my opinion The Martian was the best film of 2015. I was really excited for it to be nominated at the Oscars (thought wasn’t expecting it to win.)

I would strongly recommend this film (and the book! Though its very science-heavy so be warned to science haters like myself) to anyone and everyone! It kills me that I don’t have this on DVD yet!